In our effort to continuously drive increased traceability for Better Cotton, we are introducing user accounts for fabric mills to the Better Cotton Tracer. Initially, this will be run as a pilot. The change will mean that for the first time fabric mills will be part of the Better Cotton chain of traceability, allowing BCI retailers and brands to trace their cotton purchases more accurately and transparently.

In 2013, BCI, in partnership with ChainPoint, introduced an online traceability platform for use by ginners, spinners and retailers to record purchases and sales of Better Cotton – the Better Cotton Tracer.

The new pilot category gives fabric mills access to the Better Cotton Tracer for one year. This access will allow retailer members of BCI to track the use of Better Cotton more easily as it moves through the supply chain, increasing transparency. In some cases, retailers will have full visibility from field to fabric for the first time. The updates to the system will not yet give the option of ‘Better Cotton Products,’ but do take BCI one step closer to the possibility of full physical traceability becoming an option for Retailer and Brand Members in 2016.

Ruchira Joshi, BCI Director of Programmes – Demand, says: “BCI aims to recruit 250 fabric mills as users in 2015, before assessing the success of the fabric mill pilot category. We hope that by extending the use of the Better Cotton Tracer across different actors, BCI will contribute to more trusting relationships between these actors and a more transparent cotton sector as a whole.”